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Today saw a new event for the parish - a walk for men of about eight miles from Hollingbourne to Aylesford along the North Downs Way and part of the ancient Pilgrims' Way. Here we are, having been dropped off at Hollingbourne. Trefor, who in Austria could have claimed the title of Wanderfuhrer, is explaining that the walk is not too hilly.

After about two minutes, we came to the first of the not too hilly bits:

The view was pretty spectacular along much of the way. The Good Lord blessed us with perfect weather and some welcome breezes on the higher sections.

At one point, the path obstinately refused to go along the route that was indicated on the map. Undeterred, Dan demonstrated how to negotiate the barbed wire.

There were a few of those "Lord of the Rings" moments in the wooded sections.

and a few more of those not very hilly moments. Joking apart, Trefor did a magnificent job of researching the route and guiding us. It was a most enjoyable afternoon.

Edmund put me on to a good article in yesterday's Daily Mail in advance of the Mental Capacity Act coming into force this Palm Sunday. The article is headed, We'll fight backdoor euthanasia and risk jail say doctors and it is good to see two senior doctors quoted:Philip Howard, a London gastroenterology consultant, said that he would not withdraw or withhold artificial nutrition and hydration even when it was specified in an advance decision.

"No patient should die as a result of dehydration and no patient should be allowed to die in a state of unrelieved thirst," he insisted. "It is my practice never to allow a patient to die of unremitting thirst."

Dr Howard added that a number of his colleagues had made clear "deep concern that patients may be dehydrated at the end of their lives".

Consultant geriatric psychiatrist Adrian Treloar said: "If I am asked, will I kill a patient under the Mental Capacity Act? the answer is 'no'.

One or two people have asked me what I think about The Gospel According to Judas. To be honest, it was on the list of things to think about when some rather more important tasks had been tackled. Back from an afternoon's walk to Aylesford, I cooked up something to eat and read the Catholic Herald. They have a good article on it which got me looking on the internet.

Courtesy of The Cafeteria is Closed, I found the article by Fr Paul Mankowski which the Herald had quoted. In his remarks on the gospel according to judas, Mankowski offers the following clarfications:The Pope did not "bless" the Archer-Moloney novel.The Pontifical Biblical Institute provided the bottled water at the speaker's rostrum for the Archer-Moloney press conference. Its scholars had nothing whatever to do with the book's content.The Archer-Moloney novel was not "published with Vatican approval."No biblical scholar, including my former colleague Fr. Frank Moloney, believes Fr. Frank Mo…

Another visit to Aylesford yesterday for the Parents' Faith Group at my parish began with us celebrating Mass in the simple but prayerful Cloister Chapel. Above the Altar there is a beautiful ancient crucifix:After Mass, I conducted a tour of the shrine, beginning with the historical exhibition showing paintings by Adam Kossowski illustrating various events in the history of the Carmelites.

Here is his depiction of the Friars being cast out into the street as a result of Henry VIII's Dissolution of the religious houses.

After visiting the other chapels and saying a prayer at the relic of St Simon Stock, we repaired to the shop for tea and the purchase of books and devotional articles, the pottery to see the work in progress and then the local pub "The Chequers" for an enjoyable lunch.

It was raining all day and this made me fearful that the men's walk today might be a rather drenched affair. It was not to be so ...

A young priest sent me the following by email. I am happy to post it with little in the way of comment except the following:

1. The priest concerned will bring this matter to the attention of the local ordinary. Do not underestimate the difficulty that faces him.

2. It is a shame that young clergy who are happy to live in obedience to their Bishop and cultivating a solid interior life have to face these problems.One of the highest pastoral priorities for me as a Priest is helping people to receive God’s forgiveness in Confession or Reconciliation. Hearing Confessions can be demanding and tiring, but I love this sacrament – both as minister and penitent.

I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if, through laziness, I denied the people their right to encounter the mercy of God through this sacrament. It’s one of the main reasons why I became a Priest. I could even say that it’s what I live for!

A lot of my preaching and pastoral work is done with the hope of helping people to feel welcome and…

From Tuesday afternoon until lunchtime today, I was at Aylesford Priory giving a short retreat to some parishioners. (Mulier Fortis has also posted about the retreat with some good photos.) Aylesford is one of my favourite places in the world. I think it is undervalued by Catholics locally. After all, it is the home of St Simon Stock to whom Our Blessed Lady gave the original brown scapular.

Aylesford was founded when the hermits of Mount Carmel had to leave the Holy Land. One of the English Crusaders gave the hermits a plot of land on the banks of the river Medway. This river was an obstacle to the Romans on their British campaign and still offers problems. Recently, the friars have completed a new wall to keep the river at bay.

The buildings are a mix of old and new. The Friary was dissolved by Henry VIII and the friars were cast out into the street. From then until the early 20th century, it was home to various wealthy families. When it came back into Carmelite hands, the surviving o…

Blair makes it clear in his speech that he is wholeheartedly in support of the changes that have happened in the country's culture and he regards them as a significant part of his legacy as he prepares to step down from office. The recognition of civil partnerships, the Equality Act and the Sexual Orientation Regulations are part of this change in the culture of the UK which he was celebrating. He said,I think the civil partnership is really the thing that, as I was saying to people earlier, it is a thing that doesn't just give me a lot of pride, but it actually brought real joy.He goes on to say that he did "a little skip around" when he saw…

Sir Dan told me this evening of the Iona Institute which is an Irish non-governmental organisation dedicated to the strengthening of civil society through making the case for marriage and religious practice.

The Director of the Iona Institute is David Quinn who came to the notice of Catholics worldwide after Zenit news published his debate with Richard Dawkins which was broadcast on RTE's "The Turbridy Show" (Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2 of the debate.)

I suddenly realised today that it is nearly a year since I started blogging. Checking the archives, I find that the actual date of the first post was 6 April 2006. So this year, that will be, let me see, err, oh dear, Good Friday. So no champagne celebrations then.

Looking up an almanac of moveable feasts, I see that 6 April will not fall on Easter Sunday until 2053. Not likely I will live until then.

BTW I checked google for "blogiversary" (442,000 hits) and "blogniversary" (477 hits) so have unthinkingly gone along with the majority view. It's nice to be able to do that occasionally :-)

My favourite from the Aliens in This World is:10. Your browser’s homepage is now the news page at vatican.va. The one in Italian.That gets developed with delightful silliness as you write code to refresh the page every five minutes, then realise that is not often enough and eventually your computer becomes a denial of service attack all on its own and the Vatican webmistress sends over the swiss ninja death guard to rip out your modem.

My favourite from the Curt Jester's list:3. You have thought about punching the next person who uses the word "nostalgic" referring to your wanting the Tridentine rite available.

Fiorella has reminded me that she did some extensive work analysing the BBC programme Sex in the Holy City which I mentioned in the post Can We Trust the BBC - 1.

Her article is in pdf format and is downloadable from this page at the SPUC website. It looks particularly at:Allegations made, particularly the use of unreferenced figures and case studiesThe use of slanted language and interview tacticsThe omission of informationThe use of negative stereotypesIt is incontrovertibly demonstrated that in this programme the BBC breached its own guidelines.

The BBC's response to an initial complaint was: The BBC programme complaints unit concluded its response to SPUC by finding that “the programme supported its claims with properly researched and journalistically sound examples” and could “find no grounds for upholding your complaint against this programme.”There is a good example to illustrate Robin Aitken's claim that the BBC knows it can slough off complaints because it is difficult …

From the Prologue:"The licence fee brings with it a unique quid pro quo: it follows that because everyone pays for the BBC everyone has an absolute right to fair treatment from the BBC. That is the bedrock of the contract between the BBC and the country; and it is this contact that has been corroded by the inherent bias within the BBC’s journalism."Robin Aitken is a former BBC reporter who spent 25 years working within the corporation. His book details his own attempt to draw attention to bias within the BBC at the highest level, concerns that were dismissed on the say-so of the Head of BBC News.

I recommend Can we Trust the BBC? to readers of this blog: you will find chapter eight especially interesting because it looks in some detail at BBC reporter David Kerr’s research into the 2003 Panorama Programme Sex and the Holy City. Aitken comments:The great value of Kerr’s analysis is that it subjects a BBC programme to exactly the same sort of journalistic scrutiny which the BBC…

I don't normally do tech support but this problem has caused incovenience to some readers. Therefore...

THE PROBLEMIf someone pastes in a long URL into the combox (e.g. from a newspaper story) it may go beyond the end of the line. (There are no spaces for the line to break at.) The text is all there but you can't see it. If you try to select to the end of the line, you do not get all the URL.

THE WORKAROUNDIf people do this, you can solve the problem as follows:Select from the beginning of the URL to a line below the URL. Paste this text into Windows notepad. There you can see the whole of the URL, you can select it, copy it to the clipboard and then paste it into the link box of the browser.

HOW TO AVOID CREATING THIS PROBLEM FOR OTHERSWhen you want to direct people to a web page, do not just paste the URL text into the combox. Do a link instead using the html anchor tag. Here's what you do:

Channel 4 is running a poll. Wording as follows:Sex and relationships education in Britain has been highlighted by Davina McCall in Let’s Talk Sex. Tell us what you think.

Should sex education be compulsory in the UK for all pupils regardless of their parents' wishes?When I looked, it was 93% in favour of sex-ed regardless of parents' wishes. Here is a link where you can cast your vote.

"She is the Immaculata, who receives God's gift unconditionally and is thus associated with his work of salvation. Mary of Nazareth, icon of the nascent Church, is the model for each of us, called to receive the gift that Jesus makes of himself in the Eucharist."(Sacramentum Caritatis 33)

Having built up loads of upgrade brownie points with T-mobile, I decided it was time to get a new phone-pda. I've used Palm devices for quite a while so I regard it as a bit of a backward step to have to go to windows mobile. I got the MDA in its all-singing, all dancing version (though I have gone into settings/dancing and permanently disabled liturgical dance.)

The trouble is, being windows and all, setting it up is a major investment of time - something I don't have much of. Several re-installs of the utterly useless activesync later, I have downloaded a new version which has worked following a couple of hard resets of the handheld device. That being said, this is the first handheld I have had that actually does the internet in any convincing way. I'm trying out a few browsers on it and will have a look at opera's pocket version.

To be of any use, it needs an SD card - Amazon do 2Gb cards for less than a tenner so I got one of those in the post. But actually it needs …

The Mulier Fortis kindly gave me lift over to Kingsland which is "the other side of the river" (insert scary chords here.) We arrived in time for the fifth Station of the Way of the Cross led by Fr Nicholas Schofield. There were about 100 people there for the Stations; a commendable turnout for a Friday night. Here is Father at the eighth station:

There were some good questions after the talk and, as so very often, I found myself revising some opinions in the light of them. The local headmaster picked up on my comment near the beginning of the talk that I had a great respect for Dawkins. This was in reference to Dawkins' undoubted ability to explain scientific concepts in an attra…

The Catholic Truth Society have got out print copies of Sacramentum Caritatis. Following their email notification, I asked Jean who runs our pamphlet rack to order 10 copies - they arrived this morning.

I sat down with it over lunch today and read the first half through carefully. This is a wonderful exposition of the Eucharist and I will incorporate several quotations into my notes for students on sacramental theology.

It struck me also that this is perfect material for reflection for Passiontide and Eastertide. I'm starting this weekend with the relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance. It will be helpful, I think, for people to see that when I talk about the importance of being properly disposed to receive Holy Communion, the value of a spiritual communion, and participation in the Mass as something more than external actions... it is not "your priest being traditionalist" but the teaching of the Holy Father in response to a Synod of the world'…

Some recent photos of the Holy Father over at the unsurpassable fount of papal pictures, the Papa Ratzinger Forum, show him wearing a white Greca (cassock-covering coat) at the General Audience.

Now these coats, even for Cardinals, are usually worn in black. But knowing Gammarelli's, I expect if you walked in there and said "Look, I'm Pope John the twenty-fourth and I need a white Greca", they would probably ask if you wanted it in polycotton, wool or mohair.

Update: White greca experts have posted links to pictures of several other Popes sporting this garment - see the combox.

A correspondent has drawn my attention to page 27 of the print edition of the Daily Telegraph today. The 'Spy' column reports on a constituent who wrote to Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, asking him to oppose the SOR legislation.

The reply was written by a member of Simpson's staff, one Paul May:'You disgust me. You are so totally and utterly out of touch with the real world that it is no surprise to me that the Christian faith is fizzling out to nothing in the United Kingdom. Perhaps when we have managed to turn all our children gay the problem of religious bigotry affecting our laws will no longer be an issue.'Apparently Mr May has now apologised and made it clear that he does not speak for Mr Simpson. I be that caused some fluttering. The mask of "equality" is not meant to slip as dramatically as that!

The Catholic Herald leader this week is sharply critical of the lack of the failure of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales to give due publicity to Sacramentum Caritatis. Headed "A bewildering silence", the piece invites us to imagine the Church as an orchestra with Pope Benedict XVI as conductor:Last Tuesday, the Pope took to the podium to lead us in a hymn of priase to the Eucharist through his Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis. When he raised the baton, the Herald began to play at full volume, devoting pages to the new document and hailing it as a masterpiece. But we were bewildered when we looked up and saw that great sections of the orchestra were sitting in silence.The Universe seems a little hazy on the difference between various types of papal document. However, a short article on page 3 manages to make the same point as the Catholic Herald leader, albeit probably without intending to. The headline reads simply "LMS welcomes encyclical.&q…

Tomorrow night, the programme Let's Talk Sex will be repeated on Channel 4 (first shown in March last year). It will be broadcast at 8pm (an hour before the "watershed") and pushes the tired and utterly discredited line that teenage pregnancy will be reduced by more sex education.

The programme will be presented by Davina McCall. Her authority in this area is presumably based on her being a presenter of Big Brother. Davina will take you (and your children) on a visit to a Dutch sex education class where children as young as four are taught about homosexuality and shown cartoons of various sex acts. Also featured is that tried and trusted method of preventing teenage pregnancy: unrolling a condom over a prosthetic sex aid.

The Channel 4 website has this deeply moving assessment of the presenter's lone stand against the forces of reaction:In Let's Talk Sex, Davina McCall takes on the establishment over the crisis of teen pregnancies and spiralling rates of sexually …

Fr Stephen Boyle has just been out to the Royal English College in Valladolid for a few days. He sent me a photo of himself and three students of the College: Samuel Davey and Thomas Lynch from the Archdiocese of Southwark, and Mark Homsey from the Diocese of Leeds. Please remember them in your prayers.

There is a good article in the daily Standard called The Lost Girls which exposes how sex-selective abortions are targeting unborn girls by the million. At the UN, the practice is not properly highlighted because of feminist orthodoxy over abortion.

I have just been reading through the bull Auctorem Fidei in which Pope Pius VI condemned the errors of the Jansenist pseudo-synod of Pistoia. One condemned proposition that caught my eye was the following:The deliberation of the synod about transferring to Sunday feasts distributed through the year, and rightly so, because it is convinced that the bishop has power over ecclesiastical discipline in relation to purely spiritual matters, and therefore of abrogating the precept of hearing Mass on those days, on which according to the early law of the Church, even then that precept flourished.

Pius VI Auctorem Fidei 1794 n.74That is very interesting. I did not know that the Jansenists were in favour of transferring Holydays to the nearest Sunday. So many liturgical changes of recent decades were enthusiastically promoted by the Jansenists.

To avoid confusion: the condemnation of this proposition is not a matter of infallibility in dogmatic matters but a disciplinary provision, particularly c…

The Prayer Rally outside the Houses of Parliament tonight was a moving witness to the Christian faith. Led by a series of evangelical preachers using unerringly appropriate quotations from the Holy Scriptures, it was a stirring opportunity to proclaim the Gospel.

The Rally took place during the debate in the House of Lords over the Sexual Orientations Regulations. In the order of business for the House of Lords was the following:Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 Baroness Andrews to move that the draft Regulations laid before the House on 13 March be approved. 12th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee and 14th Report from the Merits CommitteeBaroness O'Caithain introduced the following amendment:to move, as an amendment to the above motion, to leave out all the words after “that” and insert “this House, having regard to the widespread concerns that the draft Regulations compromise religious liberty and will result in litigation over the content of classro…

On Monday, Peter Luff MP made a strong protest in the House of Commons about the "breathtaking abuse" of Parliament in the Government's handling of the Sexual Orientations Regulations. Several other MPs also complained about the rushing through of the SORs. Commenting in a press release issued today, Peter Luff said:“There are two quite separate issues here. First, are the regulations – which are complex– right in principle and in detail? Second, have they received proper parliamentary scrutiny?

“There is room for debate about these two rival freedoms - the freedom of religious people and organisations to apply their own moral code to difficult and sensitive decisions, and the rights of gay people not to be discriminated against. Both are genuine freedoms, but I am deeply concerned that the second freedom has taken absolute priority over the first without any debate in Parliament on a matter of such profound importance.

Some of the petitions using the e-petitions website seem to me to be poorly worded. However here is one that has no ambiguity:We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Revoke the 1967 Abortion ActThe explanatory text says simply:We the undersigned petition that the 1967 Abortion Act be revoked. The act of abortion destroys the lives of thousands of women every day, not to mention the innocent children, and is reprehensible in all circumstances.There are 548 signatures at the time of posting. Do add your name if you are eligible (you must be a British Citizen or resident to sign the petition.

Please remember in your prayers Mrs Cooper who died yesterday, aged 96, the mother of Dan Cooper (Sir Dan of the Nesbitry.) Dan returned to Ireland for the funeral and the family would be most appreciative of your prayers for Mrs Cooper.

UK Commentators draws attention to the Coronation Oath in which her was asked:Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel ?

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law ?

Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England ?After promising to do so, she solemnly swore with her hand upon the gospels:"The things which I have here promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God."UPDATE: As a blogger, I would always want to observe the proper form of the "new media" and correct anything t…

Many thanks to Edmund for the link to this excellent post Biting the hand which analyses the BBC's treatment of Wilberforce last Friday.

Indeed that looks like a good blog: Biased BBC. One item that caught my eye was a Freedom of Information request put in to the BBC by a commenter:Fed up as I was with the constant bleating about man-made global warming we get on the BBC, I thought I would find out just what they are doing to help the planet. So I put in a FOI request asking about the air miles the BBC fly, the carbon that this produces, and how the BBC offsets this. Get ready for some amazing numbers (all relate to the last reporting year):

Cally's Kitchen has an excellent post headed The Pro Life Cause: Inevitable Victory? The BBC is running a series commemorating the abolition of the slave trade. The Dúnadan speculates on a future series in which "The BBC commemorates the banning of abortion, euthanasia and eugenics with a season of programmes on TV and radio." (H/T to Mulier Fortis)

Another link between the two themes is explained by Fr Linus Clovis in an article in Faith Magazine, Slavery, the Gospel of Life and the Magisterium. He explains that although the Popes consistently and repeatedly condemned modern slavery from its very beginning in the 15th century. Slavery was also very clearly condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1686 and the captors, buyers and possessors of slaves were ordered to make compensation to them. This teaching did not have the effect that it should have had because of the lack of co-operation among some Bishops and priests. He says:Hence the durability of the scand…

A correspondent drew my attention this evening to an important passage in Sacramentum Caritatis:83. Here it is important to consider what the Synod Fathers described as eucharistic consistency, a quality which our lives are objectively called to embody. Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others: it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms. These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particula…

Another good organisation is the Association of Catholic Women which also has a quarterly publication, the ACW Review. A quote from the website:As Catholic women we are aware of the need for positive and practical action in the service of the Church.

We give our glad assent to the teachings of the Church and rejoice in the heritage which we have been given.

For many years, I have regularly received the Family Bulletin from Family and Youth Concern. The organisation campaigns on a range of issues related to the family and produces good quality materials with references.

Preparing this post, I find that the quarterly bulletin is available on the web, or by email as well as by post.

This coming Wednesday, there will be a prayer vigil outside Parliament at Old Palace Yard (the square opposite the St Stephen’s entrance to the House of Lords) on Wednesday 21st March from 7 to 9pm when the final vote on the Sexual Orientation Regulations will be taken. The Vigil is organised by Christian Concern for Our Nation. They say:We pray for a miracle next Wednesday. However, whatever the outcome it is vital that history records Christians standing for truth to the very end of the parliamentary process.This is my type of ecumenism! I will be there and it would be great to see any readers of this blog.

Sorry to be late with this but the full content of the Faith Magazine for March April is available free of charge online. The editorial is on "Pro-Life Strategy and Arguments for the Soul" and there are other pro-life articles as well as further debate on science and creation.

Until I looked at the website just now, I quite forgot that this issue includes a piece I wrote about Preaching on Abortion. This makes me feel really middle-aged. It is one thing to forget what you said but quite another to forget an article you have written :-)

In the combox, Paulinus reported on a little "digging" he has done at the Comic ReliefCash in Action page. This lists the grants given last year to charities both in the UK and overseas.

One charity that benefited last year was One World Action (Zambia). One World Action is a non-governmental organisation based in London that supports projects in Africa, Asia and Central America.

One of the documents that is made available and supported by One World Action is "Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Central America." Although some of the content is specific to Central America, the document is a good summary of policy in various areas. For example (2.1.9)One of the themes of the document is the negative influence of the Church It should be emphasised that the church’s opposition to abortion is not only due to its much trumpeted position that life begins with conception but also derives from its vision of motherhood as the destiny of all women.The document explicitly opposes…

Today was a glorious spring day in the South of England. I had a funeral and one or two other things in the morning, then a bit of space before Stations and other duties in the evening. So before grinding into the paperwork on my desk, I took a couple of hours out to get some fresh air and exercise with a walk round Lullingstone Park. Here are some photos I took showing some scenery of the North Downs. Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino!

Fr Augustine of Pluscarden Abbey writes:I am organising a retreat for single Catholic men aged 18-40 at the Abbey from 4th - 8th June 2007, to give them a chance of sampling the monastic life within the cloister. Those who come will follow our daily timetable, join us in choir for the Divine Office and private prayer, eat with us in the refectory and work with us; there will also be talks and discussions on various aspects of the monastic life and instruction on how to practice lectio divina. We are not charging for the retreat and there are cheap flights from England to Aberdeen and Inverness whence buses can be got to Elgin - we are six miles out of the town in a secluded valley.To book on the retreat, contact the Abbey by email

I am happy to pass on this email received today from a friend. It can be copied for parish newsletters and/or passed on to friends.

URGENT - contact Parliament IMMEDIATELY and ask Parliamentarians to VOTE AGAINST the SEXUAL ORIENTATION REGULATIONS (SORs) to be voted on in the House of Lords THIS WEDNESDAY 21st March.The government’s Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs), in a misguided attempt to protect people against unjust discrimination, forces schools, adoption agencies, providers of goods & services and others to act as if homosexuality is as valid a lifestyle as heterosexuality. The Government has said about the SORs: “This is not just about legislation, it is about ultimately changing the culture of our society”.It is against Catholic teaching and against the natural moral law to regard homosexuality as normal, morally acceptable or as valid a lifestyle as heterosexuality.The SORs violate people’s freedom of conscience not to be complicit in the endorsement of homosexuality…

Red Nose Day each year is an occasion for local or regional newspapers to have a go at Catholic schools. It is an easy story to write; here's how it goes: Pupils want to raise money for Comic Relief because it has been on the telly. A good head teacher refuses, insisting that they promote other charities. Shock Horror! Catholic school meanly denies children the right to wear a red nose - for CHARIDDY! And you know why? Because they don't agree with condoms!

Mrs Jackie Parkes (Catholic Mom of 10) has posted a wonderful piece from the newsletter of the Birmingham Oratory:Red Nose Day? No Thanks!Instead of supporting some morally very dubious causes by giving your money to Red Nose Day on Friday, why not celebrate a RED BOX DAY instead? The Red Box is the recognised means of raising money for The APF, the Association or the Propagation of the Faith. It is the Pope's own missionary organisation which supports those who have the task of spreading knowledge of the Faith in so many difficult circumstances throughout the world. If you haven't got a red box, you can put some extra money in the APF box by the Sacristy Door, and sign up for a box on the list at the back of Church.'If you are from the US, the Red Nose Day website will give you an idea of what people who have televisions must put up with ad nauseam tomorrow.

I wish I had known about the "Red Box Day" alternative earlier - I would have promoted the same in my pari…

Along with the other recommended commentaries on Sacramentum Caritatis that I mentioned yesterday, I would like to add Sandro Magister's intelligent summary posted today: “Sacramentum Caritatis”: Everyone to Mass on Sunday. Many readers will be interested in this snippet related to the hermeneutic of continuity:THE MISSAL OF SAINT PIUS V

Benedict XVI cites this in paragraph 3, recalling with admiration and gratitude "the orderly development of the ritual forms" in which the Mass was celebrated (and still is) until the liturgical reform of Vatican Council II, "whose riches are yet to be fully explored". And he observes: "Concretely, the changes which the Council called for need to be understood within the overall unity of the historical development of the rite itself, without the introduction of artificial discontinuities."

The rejection of these “artificial discontinuities” – according to what the pope said to the Roman curia on December 22, 2005, in th…

Ken sends me details of a Lenten afternoon of prayer with consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary at Westminster Cathedral, this Saturday 17 March, 2-4.30pm; led by Mgr Keith Barltrop and Fr Anthony Doe.

If you have a chance to attend, I can promise you that these two excellent priests will provide you with some worthwhile and spiritually enriching input.

Damien Thompson has drawn my attention in the combox to his Daily Telegraph blog in which he has commented on Sacramentum Caritatis (Pope calls for Latin revival). He is entertainingly disparaging about the "bloody press office – or "communications network", as they have the nerve to call it."

He speaks of the document in a very positive tone:The Pope's document, by the way, is a dazzling summary of Catholic teaching on the Eucharist - and a warning to clapped-out liberals that they need to improve the standards of worship. Oh, and Benedict wants more Latin in services.Then comes something of a sting in the tail:Not what the Left-wing apparatchiks at the Bishop's Conference wanted to hear. Hence, presumably, no press release – something that Catholics might want to bear in mind next time the plate is passed round for "Communications Sunday".To be honest, there is nothing in the post with which I (and many other priests I know) could not heartily co…

As part of the exercise of implementing the new "public benefit" test for charities, the Charities Commission commissioned Opinion Leader to conduct research reported in Public Perceptions of Public Benefit. Under the heading "Approach", we are told,The chosen method was a one-day Citizens’ Forum involving 51 people. A Citizens’ Forum is a unique approach which combines qualitative techniques with deliberation to enable citizens to give informed opinions and recommendations on complex issues.

While this is not a quantitative exercise, and the findings are indicative rather than conclusive, there were a number of common themes coming from different table discussions and a high level of consensus and consistency which lends weight to the findings and provide a firm foundation for the conclusions reached in this report.That sounds a whole lot like the "discussion group" approach that is so tried and tested as a means of "modernising" institutions of…

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I am happy to pass on the following information concerning the forthcoming Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend myself this time, but I pass on the notice with my support and recommendation.
Booking is now open for the Autumn Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, which this year takes place at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, from Wednesday 15th till Thursday 16th November.

Speakers include Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, Monsignor John Armitage (Rector of the Shrine at Walsingham) and Father John Saward.

I am trying to pray the Office each day. Should I only use the official breviary or can I use the Little Office of Our Lady?
The second Vatican Council encouraged lay people to pray the Divine Office; indeed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy encouraged parish priests to see that Vespers are celebrated in Churches on Sundays, something that is quite rare nowadays. So it is an excellent practice for you as a lay person to pray at least a part of the Office. By doing so, you unite yourself to the whole Church in the prayer which Christ offers up as our High Priest. It is rightly called a sacrifice of praise when we pray the psalms to sanctify the hours of the day.

Priests and religious are bound to celebrate the Divine Office every day and must use the Office that is approved for them. Secular priests, for example, must use either the Liturgy of the Hours (the Office that was composed after Vatican II) or the older breviary that was approved before the Council. Lay people who are no…

When I was a student in Rome, I remember going with a priest for Mass in one of the ancient Churches. The priest said that he was going to use Eucharistic Prayer II because it was the most ancient of all the prayers and was specifically Roman, composed by Hippolytus. This was the standard view at that time (early 1980s) but has since been called into question. A number of people have recently mentioned the matter to me and so here are a few notes for you.

In the 19th century, a number of ancient texts were discovered that were similar to the "Apostolic Constitutions", (of which the first modern edition was published in 1563). Among these texts was a document which came to be referred to as the “Egyptian Church Order”. In addition, the Canons of Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini were discovered.

The scholarly consensus in the early 20th century on the dependence of these documents was that the “Egyptian Church Order” was in fact the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hippol…

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions:

The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgencePope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina. Norm 7 states:To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.”It is worth reading the other norms because …

The first is the most fundamental. Kwasniewski rightly says that it should be engaged before examining any particular principle behind the new lectionary. It is the question of the purpose or function of reading the scriptures at Mass. As he puts it:
“Is it a moment of instruction for the people, or is it an element of the latreutic worship offered by Christ and His Mystical Body to the Most Holy Trinity.”
He affirms that what we may call the doxological purpose is primary.

This question determines any subsequent discussion of what passages are chosen, how they are distribut…